Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org and also a groSolar customer, was on David Letterman on Tuesday night talking about climate change, putting solar on the White House and the future of our little planet.


Bill has been involved in climate change since the 80’s and even wrote the first book on the subject back in 1989. The past two decades have seen the largest increases in carbon output during human history. For the first 10,000 years of human civilization our atmospheric carbon was about 275 parts per million (ppm). Right now we are at 392 ppm. Most climate scientists agree that we need to be at 350 ppm (hence the name of Bill’s organization).


So why aren’t we doing anything to change? Have we become complacent? Or are there enough powerful special interests in the world who don’t want to solve this problem?


Check out Bill’s interview below (and have a tissue handy to wipe away the tears of despair).

Back in February we told you about our sponsorship of Leilani Munter, a green racecar driver. An oxymoron? No, Leilani spreads the message of environmental stewardship to over 75 million race fans. She was also just featured as a Green Hero.

Check out the Green Heroes webisode featuring Leilani.

groSolar was named #780 on the 2010 Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies in the US. This is our third year making the list. Check out our profile on the Inc. website.

groSolar CEO, Jeff Wolfe, will be presenting The Climate Project slideshow on public night of Solar Power International in October. The presentation will be held on Wednesday, October 13th from 6:00-7:30PM during Solar Power International in Los Angeles.


Mark your calendars! More details to come…

Well, this is just depressing. The Global Footprint Network has calculated “Earth Overshoot Day”:

Every year, Global Footprint Network calculates nature’s supply in the form of biocapacity, the amount of resources the planet generates, and compares that to human demand: the amount it takes to produce all the living resources we consume and absorb our carbon dioxide emissions. Earth Overshoot Day, a concept devised by U.K.-based new economics foundation, marks the day when demand on ecological services begins to exceed the renewable supply.

This year, Earth Overshoot Day was Saturday, August 21. This means that we are now living off of credit from the earth and building upon our past debts. The Global Footprint Network expects that this year we will use 150% of the resources the earth can generate this year.

Not only is this unsustainable but we are setting ourselves up for a disaster. Why don’t we do something about it?

One of our customers, Bruce Pollard of Sicklerville, NJ, sent us a great email which laid out his costs and savings when installing a 4.5 kW solar electric system with groSolar. Here are the numbers:

It was just a little over a year ago that groSolar finished the installation of the 4.5kw Solar Project on our house. I thought it would be a good time to do some evaluations and see what my true saving was.

Let me lay some background. I had electric hot water heater, clothes dryer, stove, microwave, light and other normal stuff. We were using oil hot air heat but after the energy audit decided to switch to a Heat Pump with and electric back up system. Our oil cost was $3400 a year and our electric was $3168 a year. This totaled $6568.

During this past year our electric bill was $1975. Considering this was one of the coldest winters and this summer was on of the hottest we were still able to save $4593.

The cost of the heat pump was about $10,000 with the state of New Jersey giving us 50% back within 90 days of install. The savings basically paid for the cost of the heat pump in one year.

On the Solar side we spent about $39,000 with the stage grant paying $7,980. We have received over $6,000 in Federal tax credits this year and expect to get the remaining $6000 next year. We have also received the first 2 payments totaling $2,000 from selling our SREC. So we are down to $17,020. With $2,500 a year from SREC sales a for the next 4 years we are down to $7,020. With energy savings over those same 4 years of about $4,000 a year we should be ahead of the game by about $8,980.

Thank you for your assistance in getting all the details worked out. It was a pleasure working with you and groSolar.

Thanks for letting us share your numbers Bruce!

I’m a huge fan of Google Earth and we at groSolar use it frequently to see if there are potential shading or other issues for a solar site.

I was doing a little searching around on Google Earth and wondered if you would be able to see any of our larger commercial installations using satellite imagery. Lo’ and behold you can clearly see the 1.1 MW solar electric installation we did at Mariani Packing Company in Vacaville, CA. See the solar image from space here.

Some other projects you can see from Google Earth:

Fenway Park commercial solar hot water. Google Earth Image here.

Farm-Way in Bradford, VT. Google Earth Image here.

Worcester State College in Worcester, MA. Google Earth image here (showing construction last year).

Check out this website from one of our customers, Al Blakey. He just installed a 3.4 kW solar electric system on his home in Barre, Vermont and created a great website to show the process, how much he is saving, and how much he is producing with his sytem. Check it out!

For many years, Russia has denied that climate change existed going so far as to blame the climate change idea on an international media conspiracy. However, the recent heat wave and wildfires have caused something of a change of heart. As Russian President Dmitri Medvedev stated on July 30th,

“What’s happening with the planet’s climate right now needs to be a wake-up call to all of us, meaning all heads of state, all heads of social orgnaizations, in order to take a more energetic approach to countering the global changes to the climate.”

Read the full article from Time – it’s worth the few minutes.